june
by greensilver
--
He comes for her on a hot, sunny day in June. She answers the door with her feet bare and her hair down, and he stands on the porch, knuckles white around the strap of his duffel bag. He takes in her appearance - the wool trousers and silk blouse, the porcelain cast of her skin, the ageless blue of her eyes – and hesitates, unsure. Perhaps it’s that she reminds him of someone long dead; perhaps it’s just that he didn’t expect to see silver strands in her golden curls. He exhales slowly, a nearly inaudible sigh that somehow seems to make his presence on her doorstep a reality, and not just an oft-conjured fantasy.
Maybe her thoughts are more visible than she’d like, or maybe he just can’t wait any longer. He reaches through the doorframe, fingers closing over her shoulders, and pulls her across the threshold. Her body moves against his with innate knowledge of how they fit together, her hands reaching up to cup his face, thumbs stroking the dark fuzz on his cheeks. His arms encircle her, peach silk whispering against supple black leather. She lowers a hand to his chest, flattening a palm over his heart. He slips his fingers over hers, pressing them down until her joints ache and his pulse beats in her fingertips, steady and strong.
Her gaze lifts to meet his, and his smile is equal parts happy and amused. She can’t remember how he used to smile, if the look he used to give her was any different from the one he’s giving her now; such details have long since faded from memory, treasured still in absentia. She tries to remember the last words he spoke to her, knowing she ought to have had some clever quip ready for just this situation. “Angel...”
He’s still smiling, and she wonders if he always smiled this much, if his eyes always lit that way. “Yes?” He looks older than he did when last she saw him, and it troubles her a little, to see him aging – to know that he’s going to die. She wonders if he’s thinking anything similar.
“It’s been so long,” she says, lacking anything more meaningful. “So long.” Strange, she thinks, how words elude her in the really important moments. In the distant past that he is so much a part of, she always had a surfeit of words – an enormous vocabulary of pop culture phrases and trendy slang, pouring out of her in a steady stream of syllables that bridged every pause in conversation and filled every gap. They would kiss, she would talk, they would kiss some more. Now, they do not kiss and she does not talk; the silence feels almost necessary. His heart continues to pound beneath her fingers, his pulse quickening slightly as the silence stretches out. He continues to smile, she continues to stare, and both are lost in thought, searching in vain through fading memories for some hint of what to do next.
She wonders if she ought to lift her lips to his, if his mouth would remember the shape of hers. If vampire memories are sharper, linger longer, even when the vampire is newly human. She wonders if he recalls their first kiss, the way she tasted, the way she felt in his arms, beneath his hands ... “Angel,” she says again, beginning to smile. “I invite you in.”
His own smile broadens, becoming more genuine. “Thanks.”
-
Once upon a time, perhaps he would have smelled the saline in her unshed tears; now his senses are dulled and he lies oblivious on the bed, sleepy and happy and so very, merely human.
She sits near the door on a rocking chair, knees pulled up to her chest. Her curls have fallen out a bit, and loose waves of silver and gold fall down her back, swaying gently over the indigo satin of her nightgown as she rocks the chair back and forth. On the table to her right rests a novel, her reading glasses sitting atop it, pinning the pages shut.
Part of her wants to go over there and shake him until his teeth rattle – to demand to know what he’s doing here, why he came, why it took him so long to come. If this had happened ten, fifteen years ago – when there could have been children and soccer practice and some kind of a future ... if this had happened back then ...
Would it have made a difference?
She reaches for the novel, settling her reading glasses on the bridge of her nose and glancing at him over the wire rims. He sleeps on his stomach, the blankets pushed down to his waist; one arm dangles off of the bed, fingers brushing the carpet. And he breathes. She listens to the quiet sounds he makes as he rests, and thinks of Riley and Xander and every man who ever lulled her to sleep with the slow, even rhythm of his breathing. Her gaze drifts down to the book in her hands, and she forces herself to turn to the first page, tries to concentrate on the words written there.
“Buffy?” He awakens, rolling over onto his side. She watches him blink as his eyes gradually adjust to the room’s dim lighting, smiles slightly in sympathy. Perhaps it’s not so different, really – being young and being middle aged, being a vampire and being human. Perhaps ....
She snaps the book shut, returning it to the table. The chair slowly stops rocking, and she folds her arms over her knees, leaving the reading glasses in place on her nose. “Yes?”
He sits up, stealing a few of her pillows and shifting around to find a more comfortable position. “Nocturnal habits die hard, don’t they?” If the glasses are her version of a gauntlet thrown, he doesn’t seem to notice, or care. Or perhaps he does notice, and this is his way of rising to the challenge. “What are you reading?”
“Something Giles gave me for Christmas.” She takes off the glasses, feeling a little foolish. “Poetry.” Sliding off of the chair, she moves back to the bed and flips the blankets back, settling next to him. “I like it.”
“If you’ve had it since Christmas,” he points out, “either you don’t like it that much, or nocturnal habits don’t die all that hard.”
She laughs – quietly, almost reluctantly. “I hate poetry. Giles gives me a book every year. I pretend to read it, and he pretends to think I’m becoming well-read, and sooner or later the book disappears from my shelves during one of Dawn’s visits, never to be seen again.”
“So,” he says, trying – and failing - to make it sound conversational. “Not everything has changed, then.”
Her hand moves across his chest, coming to rest just above his heart. “No,” she whispers. “Not everything.”
Miscellaneous Fandoms | Main | Feedback